A Born Maniac

A BORN MANIAC, or Puddles’s Progress

       Set in 2001-2002


               “I’m a Maine native, a born Maniac.”

                  —Jean Pond Cram, aka Puddles


Puddles may have been born in Maine, but where are her real roots? She spent her teens in New Hampshire and her married life in South Carolina. Has she established roots in these other states? Or has she felt like a displaced person all these years?


The most uninhibited of THE CHEERLEADER’s three friends, intrepid Puddles is widowed now and still working at two jobs in South Carolina (nurse and cheerleading coach). Her settled life is suddenly shaken by the death of her mother, a complicated milestone for daughters. Concern about her father galvanizes her, and their trip to visit Maine relatives will become her progress to adventure, an island, a castle, hard decisions, and rebirth.


Puddles is “just as hilarious as when she chased Snowy around a 1950s Woolworth’s with giant underwear.”

                            —from the foreword by Ann Norton Holbrook